


Pride Cometh Before The Fall

by raptormoon



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: BASE Jumping, Funny, Gen, Maui being Maui, Mini Maui being Mini Maui, failure before success, risky endeavors, trying AND failing, you think I'm kidding but just you wait
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 00:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14273319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raptormoon/pseuds/raptormoon
Summary: ...But Then There Is FlightFor the prompt "Maui learning how to fly in his hawk form for the first time."





	Pride Cometh Before The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Here is my fulfillment for the [Moana Spring Break Exchange!](https://moana-party.tumblr.com/) As requested by [Glamorous Revenge](https://glamorous-revenge.tumblr.com/):  
> Maui learning how to fly in his hawk form for the first time.

Maui was very good at shapeshifting.

The first few forms he took were a breeze. Iguana, tortoise, coconut crab - all easy peasey. The crab took a few minutes to get used to walking, but no big deal.

Next he thought he’d try a bug, since he was used to all the extra legs from the crab. Being so small was unsettling at first, especially as his peripheral vision fractured. He stumbled before he focused, and then he was on his way.

So, lots of legs were fun. How about _no_ legs? When Maui tried the shape of a shark, he was thrilled. Already a skilled swimmer, the lithe, powerful grace of the shark fit him well. He leapt and danced in the water, whooping for joy. At some point he tried the whale, thinking “Bigger is better!” but it turned out that wasn’t the case. The whale was big, yes, and graceful, to be sure, and its sheer weight gave it an edge in power. But it was also slow and ponderous, and the baleen, so strange compared to his teeth, itched Maui’s lower lip relentlessly.

Undeterred, Maui wondered, if bigger isn’t better, what is?

The answer was _higher._ Leaping out of the sea as a shark or whale was fun and all, but it wasn’t the same as touching the sky.

He dismissed going back to the beetle shape. Sure, it had wings, but they were puny. The whole of the creature was puny, even if his own version was bigger than the average beetle. No, no, Maui wanted something big. Grand! _Flashy!_

He knew just the thing.

 

~~~

 

“Pff! Of course I know what I’m doing!” Maui enthused. “A hawk even has the same number of limbs as me, so how bad can it be?”

A tiny eyebrow raised.

Maui waved his hand dismissively. “I’ve flown a bit as a bug, and yeah, yeah, I know. The hawk is gonna be different. Jump, flap, flap, right? No problem!”

A silent head shook, probably in exasperation.

Maui rolled his eyes. “Okay, enough out of the peanut gallery. I’m doing this!” He grinned fiercely, a twinkle in his eye. He raised his magic fishhook high above him, pointing it straight up to that sky he would soon be master of.

“Cheee-hoooo!” he called, and in a bright flash of light he transformed.

Yes! He had done it on the first try, full hawk, awesome colors, no extra heads, _big,_ and in proud possession of the feathered wings that would raise him higher than any human or demigod had ever gone before.

Beyond pleased, Maui puffed out his chest and lifted his wings high. He flapped them once, then twice, getting a feel for how they pushed at the air beneath them. Then he leapt, beating his wings down in powerful strokes, gaining altitude with every flap.

Until, quite suddenly, he was falling back down.

He landed on his feathered rump, baffled confusion crisscrossing through his mind as he reflexively flashed back to his human form.

Maui could _feel_ chortling, and the confusion quickly morphed into petulant anger. “Hey, now,” he griped. “None a’that. You think you could do any better?”

He really should’ve known better than to ask that of a piece of ink. With a smirk, a small hawk appeared on his chest and swooped gracefully across to his shoulder. Maui rolled his eyes. “Show off,” he muttered.

Maui stood up and brushed the sand off, gathering his thoughts. He squinted up at the sky as though he were judging distance, or the time, or something equally wise and practiced. Really, though, he was just trying to cover his confusion. What hadn’t worked? There should’ve been nothing to flying. Birds did it all the time!

He heaved a breath, then tried again. The transformation went perfectly, of course; Maui was a pro at changing shape by now. But now he took his time, flexing his taloned toes into the sand, bending his knees, even jumping a little. Everything felt… pretty normal, really. He flapped his wings again, taking care to test out angles beyond just up and down. He’d rushed it the first time, too excited to be soaring amongst the clouds. But he could be patient when he needed to be.

The way the air caught in his feathers was new and distracting, but Maui paid close attention to every little nuance of sensation. He’d learned before, like with the beetle and the shark, that sometimes you had to take everything in and feed it into the animal brain before things worked.

So, Maui took his time with this. Patience was the key! Even demigods couldn’t always pick something up on their first try, after all.

With every moment he felt more sure, more secure. Finally he took a deep breath and let it out with a mighty hawk’s screech, leaping into the air! He could feel the way the air moved under him this time, and adjusted accordingly, flapping down with great strokes of powerful wings and driving himself higher, and higher, and higher!

...Until, once more, he found himself crashing back into the sand.

“Oh, come on!” he shouted, as he regained his human skin and jerked himself back up to his feet. He glared first at his legs, then at his arms. When a tickling on his chest signaled laughter, he glared right down at his pectoral, expression darkening. “You could help, you know.”

Tiny ink hands raised in response.

“I don’t know!” Maui growled. “But I’m sure you could!”

He crossed his arms in a huff and squinted up at the sky again. Clouds floated up there, soft and serene. Maui really wanted to touch them, soar through them, find out what they were like. He had to keep trying, of course; but was there maybe, by any chance, an easier way?

His eyes came across a sheer cliff, down across the island. He blinked, then smiled.

A few muscles tensed in his arm, seeming to push back against him before he could even step forward.

“What? A little fall like that, it’s just the thing to get the wind beneath my wings!” He gestured with his other hand, a falling motion followed by an upward swoop.

The tattoo version of himself copied the motion, but instead of swooping there was a splatting against the other hand.

Maui rolled his eyes. “That’s not gonna happen, I _promise._ It’ll be just enough to get a little momentum going! It’ll be fine!”

However, once he was at the top of that cliff, bravado stepped aside and Maui found himself a little worried. That was a _long_ ways down. And it wasn’t water directly beneath; instead, a brief beach of large, not-fun-looking rocks waited between the base of the cliff and the water. He bit his lip and wondered, briefly, if he should back away, go back down, and just keep trying the long, hard way.

...Nah.

He did take one, single preparatory step back, and a huge breath in. He let it out in a gush as he transformed, distinctive warcry absent from his lips. Once more a hawk, he looked out again. This time he noticed how sharp his vision had become: details that were normally lost on the horizon were clear as day now. Looking down, he could even detect a few animals skulking in the shadows of the rocks and the swirls of the tidepools.

Maui set his line of sight to middle-distance, some invisible point above the water and away from the cliff. That was where he needed to go. He spread his wings wide and felt the wind, blowing up against the cliff, give him some lift. Okay; now or never!

He tilted over the side of the cliff, and began falling.

At first it was fun! The air streaming past his face was a novel, if chilly, sensation. He flexed his wings, trying to catch the updraft of air and use that lift for flight.

Only… nothing happened. Except that he kept falling, plummeting like a stone.

Slightly worried now, he tried to flap; that only made him fall faster.

In a panic, Maui began backpedalling, waving his feathered wings frantically but gaining nothing more than a sharp bump into the cliff wall.

The rocks below were getting too close _way_ too fast! As he fell, his shadow below him grew large, becoming the perfect target for his short and sudden impact. Upon one of the rocks, a small purple crab looked up at him in confusion.

Finally, Maui’s mind blanked, too overcome by panic to do anything rational. Instead, he just… stopped. Shut his eyes and waited for the pain.

Without his even thinking about it, his wings rotated, his hawk’s beak dipped, and air swelled beneath his feathers. Maui kept waiting, in that dark and quiet corner of his mind where he’d retreated, but the impact never came.

It never came for so long, in fact, that Maui finally dared open his eyes again.

He was soaring! The ocean was beneath him, the cliff behind him, and nothing but the clouds above. He had done it! All that he’d had to do was not _think,_ just be natural and let instinct take over. And now that he _had,_ it was wonderful. Beautiful! Perfection!

Maui swooped and dove, never thinking about it, just _doing._ He cheered and whooped and screamed the hawk’s call in wild joy, swooping through clouds and climbing ever higher into the air.

Of course, there was only so high he could go before he ran out of sky. Maui thought maybe, just maybe, he would have to do something about that.


End file.
